Pacificapocalypse

We Watch Movies: Taken

The trailer sold me. In the maybe 3 minutes of scenes, they set the entire film.
No spoilers here.
Badass ex-CIA dude is making nice with his daughter. Daughter gets kidnapped. Badass ex-CIA dude does scary monotone soliloquy over phone to kidnapper. Kidnapper basically tells him to fuck off. Swift and mind numbing violence ensues.
See? No complicated relationship? No comedic element. Just badass ex-CIA dude kicking ass and taking names. A little gunplay, a little car chase, some hand to hand. Maybe a twist or two, but we’ve see this movie a couple of times now (I’m looking at you Man On Fire and Ronin) and sometimes I just want to be entertained.

Except…

Along the way to being entertained, I was a little let down. Don’t get me wrong, the bad guys were bad, the good guy was good. The car chases and fight scenes were about what I expected. Just not quite. It felt like the director was holding back and that there was soooo much more that they could have done. It felt conflicted – SPOILER ALERT There’s a tense scene with badass ex-CIA dude and an dirty official of a foreign intelligence agency. They’re at the dinner table. Foreign dude’s wife and kids are there but they don’t know that there’s a conflict. Ex-CIA dude needs information from foreign dude, but he’s not getting it. Things pop and ex-CIA dude shoots the wife. I mean he just turns and shoots the wife. It’s cold and effective and unexpected. I wanted more of that! But then we’d have scenes that just felt like there was more graphic content missing.

Over on calguns we were going back and forth on this and someone suggested that there was a European Directors version that filled in these missing scenes. I wasn’t so sure:

I wonder if there really *is* a Euro version. If there is and it’s more graphic, I’d be mad; hey man this is America, we INVENTED violence in movies. Heck we practically invented VIOLENCE.

Ok so maybe not invented it, but we’ve damn well almost perfected it.

And I let it go at that until this:

Come on man! Seriously?
Damn Europeans.

We’ll watch it again of course. Won’t feel right until we do.

A report hit on Monday, January 26, regarding High Fructose Corn Syrup and mercury.
Not cool.
I’ve been a nay-sayer and hatchet man against HFCS since reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma about two years ago. (An excellent read by the way, if you have any interest in where your food comes from.) Suffice to say I’ll take sugar or honey (though honey has it’s own set of problems) any day over HFCS. The funny thing is that right around the time people started becoming more aware of HFCS, how pervasive they are, and the potential health risks associated with it, the Corn Refiners Association (the trade association that represents the corn refining industry) who have a vested interest in the production of HFCS, apparently hired a PR firm and threw together a little site called The Truth About High Fructose Corn Syrup, to plead their case before the public. It’s filled with all sorts of fascinating information about Our Friend High Fructose Corn Syrup™. They play a little fast and lose with the details, but come on kids! It’s from CORN! So it has to be good right? It’s natural. Yeah. Right. Lead, arsenic and cancer are all naturally occurring, let’s slather some of that on your toast. Big tobacco plays this game too.
So of course they had to respond to this negative report ASAP, and here’s what they had to say:

“This study appears to be based on outdated information of dubious significance. Our industry has used mercury-free versions of the two re-agents mentioned in the study, hydrochloric acid and caustic soda, for several years.”

Hydrochloric acid and caustic soda?
Really, Corn Refiners Association? Is that what you wanted to say?

You’re not helping.

Oh great, this I need right now. Just got this in a company wide email:

To: SFC-All Users
Subject: Chronicle Communication – This Evening’s Planned Protest
We have been advised that there is a protest planned today from 5 until 7 p.m. at The Chronicle building at 901 Mission St. The protest is in response to the media’s coverage of events in the Middle East.

If you make me miss my bus, you keffia wearing hipster trustafarian douchebags, I’m gonna start crackin; skulls.

Via Pacifica Riptide

Local Mideast Peace Rally Turns Ugly

Tonight around 6, as people gathered peacefully at Highway 1 and Linda Mar to protest the war in Gaza, an enraged motorist stopped in traffic and engaged in a shouting match with the demonstrators. Then he parked his car at the shopping center and returned to the scene, shouting and shoving demonstrators, slightly injuring one of them. When the agitated man ran through the parking lot, several demonstrators followed him to take his picture and hold him for police, who shortly came on the scene to question the man and several witnesses. No one pressed charges, so because police did not see the incident occur, they took down the man’s information and released him. One bystander noted that as soon as the police detained him, his demeanor changed drastically, and he spoke calmly with police as if nothing had happened. But this reporter had heard the man shouting earlier and had seen him up close as he ran through the parking lot, his face and eyes full of hate and fear.

Pretty spot on; coincidentally I was in my car directly opposite this as it occurred, lamenting the fact that I didn’t have my camera on me. ‘This reporter’ sounds like he has a little bit of a personal agenda with the line ‘face and eyes full of hate and fear.‘, but I can confirm the that the guy threw punches and tore down some of the protesters signs.

Every discussion board I’m a member of is burning up with the war in Gaza right now and man there are some absolutely white hot emotions and incredibly vitriolic rants being posted. There seems to be no middle ground (or such a small amount that cooler heads get trampled in the rush to post screeds.) with these people. And that’s just online, from people that are *not* getting shot or blown up or having rockets dropped on them.
When will this shit ever end?

Wednesday, December 10 – Follow-up:

DocPop has a piece on this up as well as a more detailed post over at Laughing Squid.

From You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice:

Emily the Strange is a rip off of a 1978 book character

The page on the left is from a 1978 book called Nate the Great Goes Undercover, by Marc Simont.
The poster of Emily the Strange on the right is from 1991.

WOAH. BACK UP. SERIOUSLY? Yes. The top image is a page from Nate the Great Goes Undercover, complete with text. This book was published in 1978. The bottom image is one of the first images of Emily the Strange ever made publicly available–it was sold, WITH THAT TEXT INCLUDED, as a bumper sticker.

What’s the saying? Oh yeah: Talent borrows, Genius Steals.

I have a little more than passing acquaintance with the Twilight series, primarily through Court, who as a educator of these… young minds, has to experience the fan phenomena on a more personal level every day.

And her opinion is clear if not profane.
And apparently she’s not alone.
Came across this via Reddit:

Twilight has raped the minds of teenage girls everywhere…

Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga has stormed onto the national scene drawing streams of female fans, ranging from pre-teens to adults and has spurred a blockbuster movie…and has just reiterated the same concept illustrated to me by Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code: most people have no idea what composes good storytelling or literature.

Read the whole thing.
My favorite take is a comment by Akira:

Let’s cut to the chase.
These books, and the movie, are evil.
Evil sells.
All this talk about “Well at least kids are reading!” is such nonsense. It’s like saying about Satanists, “Well at least they’re praying.”

For facile critics of critics: No, they’re not evil because they’re about vampires. And they’re not good books because there’s no sex. Better a thousand morally serious, obscenity-riddled and sex-filled books about evil, than one lousy sexless Satanic book that presents evil as normal, reasonable or understandable.

Could not have said it better myself.

Ok, look, I’m all for activism, social change, inclusiveness and public demonstration, but this is just plain stupid.

From today’s issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian in the Alerts section:

Freeze and chant? It’s like the joke when the robber stick the gun in the victims face and says “Don’t move! Put your hands up!” “So wait, do I not move or do I put my hands up?” And I *despise* flash mobs and their associated nonsense; they’re annoying and no longer the unique occurrence they were once upon a time. That time was a Tuesday afternoon, for about 20 minutes, in late 2002. Just ask this girl if they’re still a good idea.
These guys need to take a clue from Improv Everywhere.
Now they know how to do a public scene.

There is so much wrong in this article, I don’t even know where to begin.
Emphasis all mine.
Via the Burlingame Daily News

Yay! Pacifica! Keeping it real!…weird.

Wordpress 2.6 is out but unfortunately not all my plugins are compatible. So the upgrade turned into a downgrade.
Need to get with Julien De Luca
the creator of the theme I use and the very practical plugin that makes customizing the theme a trivial exercise.
Until then we stay with 2.5.

…things like the war, addressing the economic situation, crime and all the assorted other concerns of the public, it’s nice to see them start into the real issues.

Like regulating how loud television commercials should be.

Way to go guys. Good use of time and public funds.